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Home  »  Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen  »  Page 332

Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.

Page 332

them from Oyster Bay, and whom wild horses could n’t drag away from the Roosevelts, had protested that they mussed the beds too much. I have read of President Jackson making an isolated ward of the White House, and himself nursing a faithful attendant who was stricken with the smallpox, when his fellow-servants had run away; and of Lincoln laughingly accepting General Grant’s refusal of the dinner Mrs. Lincoln had planned in his honor, because he had “had enough of the show business.” The Colonel of the Rough-Riders bowing obediently before the law of the household, and retreating before Rose where she was rightfully in command, belongs with them in my gallery of heroes; and not a bit less hero does he seem to me, but more.
  The White House in its new shape—or, rather, as restored to the plan that was in the minds of the builders—is in its simple dignity as beautiful a mansion as any land has to show, altogether a fitting residence for the President of the American Republic. The change is apparent to the casual visitor as soon as he enters the great hall, where the noble white pillars have been set free, as it were, from